Berg's chronically unstable mother Dinah, grieving over the death of her young son, experienced a series of nervous breakdowns and later died in a sanitarium.

[1] Tillie, who lived with her family on Lexington Avenue,[1] married Lewis Berg in 1918; they had two children, Cherney (1922–2003) and Harriet (1926–2003).

[2][3] After the sugar factory where her husband worked burned down, she developed a semi-autobiographical skit, portraying a Jewish family in a Bronx tenement, into a radio show.

Though the household had a typewriter, Berg wrote her script by hand, taking the pages this way to a long-awaited appointment at NBC.

Less than two years later, in the heart of the Great Depression, she let the sponsor propose a salary and was told, "Mrs. Berg, we can't pay a cent over $2,000 a week.

[2] Berg became inextricably identified as Molly Goldberg, the big-hearted matriarch of her fictional Bronx family who moved to Connecticut as a symbol of upward mobility of American Jews.

[5] In 1951, Berg won the first ever Emmy Award for Lead Actress in a Television Series in her twentieth year of playing the role.

Co-star Philip Loeb (Molly's husband, patriarch Jake Goldberg) was one of the performers named in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television and blacklisted as a result.

He reportedly received a generous severance package from the show, but it did not prevent him from sinking into a depression that ultimately drove him to suicide in 1955.

[6] The Goldbergs returned a year after Loeb departed the show and continued until 1954, after which Berg also wrote and produced a syndicated film version.